Lauren Kavanaugh's bedroom, with its Pepto-Bismol pink walls, zebra-striped bedspread and fuzzy pillows, suggests her insecurities still live near the surface. A black sheet hangs over her closet — no door. A drawer near her bed is stuffed with Pop-Tarts, and a book on her nightstand, The PTSD Breakthrough, offers insight into her struggle. (Sonya Hebert-Schwartz/Staff Photographer)

Seventh of eight parts

By SCOTT FARWELL
Staff Writer
sfarwell@dallasnews.com

“I’m pretty good at putting on a smile, but it doesn’t mean I’m happy.”

Psychologists say victims of severe childhood abuse often have a hard time believing good things last, joyful moments are real, expressions of love are sincere.

Lauren can relate.

“I’m pretty good at putting on a smile,” the 20-year-old said. “But it doesn’t mean I’m happy.”

A quick scan of Lauren’s bedroom — beyond the Pepto-Bismol pink walls, zebra-striped bedspread and fuzzy pillows — suggests her insecurities still live near the surface.

A black sheet hangs over her closet — no door. A drawer near her bed is stuffed with Pop-Tarts, and a book on her nightstand, The PTSD Breakthrough, offers insight into her struggle.

She gets anxious when food isn’t nearby, anytime she’s alone and when country music comes on the radio. For six years, it was the soundtrack of torture at the hands of her mother and stepfather, Barbara and Kenneth Atkinson.

Lauren was rescued from a foul bedroom closet in June 2001, bone-thin and deeply scarred. She spent five weeks at Children’s Medical Center Dallas recovering from the worst case of child abuse in the hospital’s history.

There were tears in the eyes of doctors and nurses the day she left the hospital, because if anyone deserved a carefree childhood, it was Lauren.

She’d spent too much time alone, hurting and hungry, listening to a life she deserved outside the closet door. Cartoons on television. Card games at the kitchen table. Her five brothers and sisters tearing through the house, laughing and fussing and fetching Popsicles out of the freezer.

Too much time terrified — by the sickening, sweet smell of her mother’s perfume, or beer, or her stepfather’s bad breath, which often telegraphed a session of sexual abuse.

Too much time waiting — naked except for a thin, urine-soaked blanket, focused on a sliver of light under a locked door, praying it would open, dreading what would happen when it did.

“Anything was better than being in there,” Lauren said, her eyes darkened by the memory. “But they abused me when they let me out, so I can’t really say what’s worse. They were both torture.”

‘Let’s go, let’s go’

Balloons, streamers and a pile of presents greeted Lauren when she walked in the front door of her new home in Canton

Lauren’s story, of a bruised and battered but resilient little girl, captivated the nation.

News leaked that she was going home, so reporters and television satellite trucks collected in front of Children’s, hoping to get a glimpse of “the girl in the closet.”

Five floors up, 8-year-old Lauren bounced and spun and tugged at the hands of her new parents, Bill and Sabrina Kavanaugh. She was wearing a pink dress and sunglasses.

Lauren pounced on Kim Higgins as the 24-year-old caseworker with Child Protective Services stepped off the elevator.

Moments later, Higgins swept Lauren onto her hip and slipped out a back door, away from the reporters and into a sun-soaked morning.

It was an hour’s drive from Dallas, a straight shot on U.S. Highway 175 into the peaceful and piney woods of East Texas.

Higgins strapped Lauren into an infant car seat for the trip. Even though she’d gained 10 solid pounds during her five-week hospital stay, by state law she was still too little to ride in a seat with a lap belt.

She wore size 2T clothes and weighed around 35 pounds.

Balloons, streamers and a pile of presents greeted Lauren when she walked in the front door of her new home in Canton.

The Kavanaughs showed Lauren her room, drawers full of new clothes, and told her graham crackers and pink lemonade would always be sitting on the kitchen table.

Foster parents from all over the country submitted thick applications to adopt Lauren, but CPS caseworker Kim Higgins never seriously considered anyone but Bill and Sabrina Kavanaugh. They'd raised Lauren for the first several months of her life until losing a custody battle. Courtesy Photo

Lauren was especially tickled by a herd of llamas her dad raised in an open field behind their place.

In some ways, it seemed like the Kavanaughs could provide the perfect setting for Lauren, a life without drama, an opportunity to heal, a quiet place where she could sink emotional roots in firm and fertile soil.

Foster parents from all over the country, many with advanced degrees and long titles after their names, submitted thick applications to adopt Lauren.

But Higgins never seriously considered anyone but Sabrina Kavanaugh — a self-described East Texas redneck — and her husband, Bill, a man with a syrupy slow drawl who rarely stepped outside without his cowboy boots and hat.

The Kavanaughs had adopted Lauren at birth but later lost custody to her biological mother on a legal technicality.

“Bill and Sabrina wanted Lauren because she was their baby,” Higgins said. “Not because of what she’d been through, not because of the news story. And having someone love you for who you are just can’t be replaced.”

In some ways, Lauren’s homecoming that July day seemed like a happy ending to a heartbreaking story.

But the lives of severely abused children rarely follow a script.

The only thing doctors knew for sure was that Lauren faced grave risks — for lingering learning disabilities, a constellation of emotional problems and the potential for debilitating diseases.

And worse, there were no cases exactly like Lauren’s in the literature, no reference points, no child who had been tortured this long by people this sick.

At least none who survived.

Loving new parents

“It felt good to be spoiled”

Bill Kavanaugh parented Lauren with tears in his eyes.

He stood 6-foot-2 with a pink dome of a head, a snow-white beard and the calloused hands of a man familiar with hard work under the hot sun.

Some people worried that Kavanaugh, big as a bear with an equally intimidating voice, might frighten the fragile girl who’d had so many terrifying experiences with men.

But Lauren said she never saw her dad that way. His lap was big, his belly was the perfect cuddly pillow, and he was funny.

Kavanaugh would fold himself nearly in half and sit at Lauren’s kiddy table with plastic chairs on the patio. She’d serve him pretend tea and cookies, and he would pretend to enjoy them.

In time, she said, those things would build self-confidence, which would provide handrails for her daughter to hold onto while navigating a new world of school and social groups.

“She used to tell me I was as mean as her other mother,” Kavanaugh said. “Yeah, that hurt.”

The Kavanaughs clashed over parenting styles, but one issue — spanking — led to a split.

Bill Kavanaugh took the side of CPS workers and doctors at Children’s, who said Lauren already had suffered too much violence in her life. Spanking was off limits.

“But Sabrina was like, ‘This is my child and I’m doing it my way. I’ll spank her when I want to and y’all can come take her away if you want to.’ So, it was that kind of bravado,” said Sondra Mahoney, a licensed therapist who became a de facto family counselor.

Sabrina Kavanaugh said no other form of discipline worked with Lauren.

“I did whip Lauren, and CPS didn’t like that,” she said. “But when you have a child who has had no toys, taking toys away as a punishment means nothing. And we tried timeout, but that didn’t faze her either. She’d been in a closet for six years.”

Bill Kavanaugh died of a stroke in December 2003 at age 65.

Lauren remembers the fighting between her parents, and she was frightened of her dad at the end of his life.

Staying close by

At age 8, Lauren was older than her kindergarten classmates. Most days, her mother went to school right alongside her.

Sabrina Kavanaugh volunteered in classrooms at Eustace Elementary School so she could sneak across the hall a few times a day and check on Lauren. She eventually was hired as a teacher’s aide.

The proximity helped.

Once, Lauren walked up to the front of her class and started talking about her abuse.

“The teacher was like, ‘Oh my God, what do I do? Do I make her stop? Do I let her go on?’” Kavanaugh remembered, laughing.

Lauren finished and walked back to her seat.

“It was good that she got up and talked about it,” Kavanaugh said. “And I’m glad the teacher didn’t stop her because it would have made Lauren feel ashamed.”

Most parents, and eventually most of Lauren’s classmates, knew her story.

For the most part, they were kind about it.

Lauren has a Facebook page dedicated to telling her story, and she's appeared on the Dr. Phil television show. Last February, in the final months of her high school career, she worked on a project in her psychology class. Mona Reeder/Staff Photographer

Lauren’s relationship with her mother is hot and cold

But Lauren was teased about being older, and her self-esteem sagged as she struggled with reading comprehension and math concepts.

“I’m stupid,” Lauren would say through tears.

Kavanaugh was ready for her.

“If you took those kids in your class and put them in a closet and did to them what happened to you, 99 percent of them wouldn’t even be alive today,” she told Lauren. “You’re strong. You’re a survivor.”

And while she was fierce in Lauren’s defense, Kavanaugh also could be witheringly critical.

“It was hard not to just come across at Sabrina and say, ‘This is harsh. This is wrong,’” said Mahoney. “Because I knew she would cut me off, and then Lauren wouldn’t have a counselor.”

Mahoney said it took a long time for Kavanaugh to accept that her daughter’s prolonged starvation and torture resulted in some intellectual disabilities.

Over the years, Mahoney learned to comfort, more than confront.

“I love Sabrina because I see the warm side of her and the hurt and the tears that will come sometimes,” Mahoney said. “But it’s also been like, ‘I just wanna shake you.’

“We can look back over the years and see that other sets of parents might have handled many issues better. But I don’t know that there could be any more love for Lauren than Sabrina has for her.”

Kavanaugh knows what people think.

She said it’s easy to critique someone’s parenting from afar, with the benefit of a cool head and time to consider options.

Lauren’s relationship with her mother is hot and cold.

Sometimes they sleep in the same bed. Other times, they’re so angry they don’t speak for days.

‘I just haven’t felt it yet’

Lauren said she would take a bullet for her mother, but she doesn’t know if she loves her or anyone else

In 12 years, Lauren’s never spoken in-depth to her mother about the abuse.

“She’s judging,” Lauren said. “She doesn’t listen and she just asks a bunch of questions like, ‘Why didn’t you do this?’ or ‘Why didn’t you do that?’”

Lauren said she would take a bullet for her mother, but she doesn’t know if she loves her or anyone else.

“I’m not saying I’m not capable of love,” she said. “I just haven’t felt it yet.”

Psychologists say that parenting children who’ve suffered extreme abuse is an exercise in sacrifice.

The only thing she truly regrets — other than the time she whipped Lauren with a belt — was the time eight years ago when she let Lauren spend the night with family members.

For five years, Kavanaugh rarely let her daughter out of her sight. No sleepovers or slumber parties or spending the afternoon at a friend’s house.

Mahoney, CPS caseworker Higgins and others urged her to loosen the apron strings.

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So, in August 2005, she let Lauren sleep over with Kavanaugh’s niece, her husband and their two young boys.

The next morning, the niece’s 24-year-old husband, Jesse Bass, invited Lauren out to the family’s barn, where he sexually assaulted her.

He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for aggravated sexual assault of a child and possession of child pornography. His wife received probation because she knew her husband had child pornography in their house but did not report it.

“I blamed her [the niece] a little bit, but I blamed myself mostly,” Kavanaugh said as she sat next to Lauren at a Denny’s this summer. “So, you know those people who think I’m strict, well, they’re entitled to their opinion. You leave me to mine.”

Tears leaked down her face.

“Don’t even think about trying to tell me how to raise my child,” she said, her voice rising. “That’s my baby right there and ain’t nobody going to jack with my baby. That’s not happening again.”

Lauren listened impassively to her mother’s monologue.

“You eventually learn to role play and do whatever they want without fighting back and it usually makes it easer,” Lauren said of the assaults.

“But you shouldn’t have to do that,” Kavanaugh snapped.

“Sometimes it just happens,” Lauren said, “and you can’t stop it.”

Feelings of despair

In the months after being abused by Bass, Lauren felt more and more hopeless. She began keeping a razor blade under her mattress.

Little by little, she’d pull it across her wrist. Just a little deeper, she thought, and it’d all be over.

The flashbacks consumed her — when she slept and all day while walking around school.

“I’d hear Barbie and Kenneth saying they wish I was dead and I should just kill myself,” she said. “And I’d think about the sexual abuse. Not just them, but my cousin’s husband, too, and I was like, ‘What’s next?’”

Twice, school counselors noticed cut marks on Lauren’s arms and referred her to a juvenile behavioral center in Tyler.

Lauren Kavanaugh attended a therapy session in April with Lindsay Jones in Van. When Lauren was dealing with depression, Jones says, they focused on control. Lauren made significant progress after realizing she can't let her biological mother and stepfather control her through the inescapable memories of their abuse. (Sonya Hebert-Schwartz/Staff Photographer)

“In the early days, she would talk to me about her plans to kill herself”

Then one afternoon, Lauren attacked a girl in the hallway of her high school.

Her punishment, a year of alternative school and three months of residential therapy at the Meridell Achievement Center in Austin, helped her turn the corner.

Lauren learned she’s not alone.

“Emotionally, it felt like I was the only person in the world who felt like that,” Lauren said. “But I looked at these kids and I thought, ‘Yeah, maybe mine was worse, but they went through some stuff, too.’”

The voices didn’t fall silent, but Lauren felt stronger.

Mahoney referred her to a new therapist, Lindsay Jones, who specializes in counseling teenagers.

It was slow going.

Lauren said it took two years before she really opened up.

“In the early days, she would talk to me about her plans to kill herself and having nightmares and flashbacks, and she was just going to end it all,” Jones said. “She was severely depressed.”

Jones narrowed in on one issue: control.

For all those years, her biological mother and stepfather had it all. And she told Lauren they were still controlling her.

Was she going to let them do that? Was she going to let them win?

That’s when Jones saw it: Lauren’s light.

“This look came over her face and she realized: ‘This is one thing I have control over,’” Jones said. “‘I can live or I can die.’”